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1:16

Hello and welcome to After Dark,

1:18

Myths, Misdeeds, and the Paranormal.

1:21

I am Anthony Delaney.

1:22

And I'm Dr. Maddie Pelling. And we all

1:24

know that the Victorians were obsessed

1:27

with death. A lot of that comes from Queen

1:29

Victoria and her loss of Prince Albert.

1:32

You only need to step inside one of their cemeteries

1:34

to see the extent of this devotion

1:37

to the dead. I'm thinking of Warreston

1:39

Cemetery in Edinburgh particularly here, where I often

1:41

walk my dogs of a morning and see

1:44

very dramatic scenes of women

1:47

draped over headstones, stone women

1:49

draped over headstones, or pain

1:52

etched across faces that have been

1:53

worked into the stonework. It's a

1:55

really evocative place to dip

1:58

into this Victorian obsession.

1:59

obsession and idea of death. But the Victorian

2:02

obsession with death did not end

2:04

there, did it, Anthony? Nor were their treatments

2:07

and commemoration of the dead confined

2:09

to graveyards.

2:11

Death's photography was a 19th

2:13

century phenomenon and one that, as

2:15

photographic studios popped up across

2:18

towns and cities and more and more people trained

2:21

in the use of cameras, transcended

2:23

class and wealth. But

2:25

the works that resulted were not necessarily

2:28

the morbid, horrifying depictions

2:31

of death that you might imagine.

2:32

So here to tell us more about

2:35

this unsettling and now largely

2:37

forgotten tradition actually is Brandi

2:39

Scalache. Brandi is the author of Mr

2:41

Humble and Dr Butcher and Death's

2:44

Summer Coat. What death and dying can

2:46

tell us about life and living.

2:48

Enjoy!

3:07

What was it that drew you to this topic

3:09

in the first place? Do you know? Is there something in

3:11

you that you're kind of going, I think that might be where this comes

3:13

from. I do. So I say a

3:16

little bit about this in the book that I

3:18

wrote and I've said it some in

3:21

public, but basically

3:22

I grew up in

3:24

a relatively impoverished area

3:26

of the country where, and

3:29

I'm in the United States, so that wasn't healthcare

3:31

in the way that you should have it.

3:34

And both of my parents had very close

3:37

brushes with death early on. So my father

3:40

had a massive heart attack. He subsequently had several

3:42

more. My mother had cancer,

3:45

which she did beat, but was

3:47

a near thing. And

3:49

I remember when I was around 12 years

3:51

old, I would go to my parents'

3:54

door at night to listen to make sure they

3:56

were still breathing because I had

3:58

an eight-year-old brother and I felt

3:59

compelled like you know that I would have to sort

4:02

of take over somehow if I lost

4:04

them and

4:04

There were a lot of other people who

4:06

died in my family So death wasn't one of those

4:08

imaginary things my partner the first

4:11

person who died he was 38 But

4:14

my family I lost people from the age of 7

4:15

on I lost a young cousin To

4:18

an inviolent way. I mean if I

4:20

I knew what death was like I'd been to many funerals

4:23

And so the reality that I might lose

4:25

my parents when I was still a child

4:28

was very very real to me and Also

4:30

the expense and the difficulty and the stress around

4:33

trying to cover hospital bills was very real to me So

4:35

a very early age I began being interested

4:38

in things like the black death

4:40

for instance I was a very big fan of

4:42

Barbara Tuchman's a distant mirror and I

4:45

lived next to I lived in an underground house

4:47

next to a cemetery which I suppose

4:49

that'll do

4:50

So sitting

4:51

on a tombstone reading about the black death

4:53

thinking about how you might lose your parents is really

4:56

good way to turn you Into a death researcher

4:58

later

4:58

in life. That's pretty formative I'm

5:01

loving that image brandy. That is that is

5:03

a pretty incredible image. So

5:05

talk to me about how this idea

5:08

of Victorian death photography

5:11

comes to be and Talk

5:14

to me a little bit about how this coincides with

5:16

the birth of photography during this

5:18

time period as well It's a kind of a nice intersection of time,

5:20

isn't it? It is for all the

5:23

well This is true the Victorian period more

5:25

generally

5:25

as you have advances in medicine

5:27

and you have advances in technologies

5:31

and these technologies begin

5:33

For the first time

5:33

to be available to more people

5:36

so some of the first photography

5:38

was daguerreotype Photography which is

5:40

on a

5:40

silver plate and obviously not

5:42

everybody can afford that kind of thing So

5:45

you weren't necessarily taking photographs the

5:47

way we do today. We really take it for granted,

5:49

right? I bet you have 200 photos

5:52

or more on your phone. Probably every listener has We

5:54

have such an ability to

5:57

quickly take images of our pets our children

5:59

our family me members ourselves with the selfies.

6:02

That just wasn't financially feasible.

6:05

So you have this

6:07

photography that is suddenly available and people

6:09

are amazed by it. Like, wow, that's my

6:12

image. But it's time consuming. You

6:14

have to hold very still. The shutters,

6:16

it wasn't like our shutter speeds of today.

6:18

So they would open up the plate. The plate

6:20

is going to receive the image using chemicals.

6:22

And if you moved,

6:25

you created a blurred image. You had to hold

6:27

still for quite a long time.

6:28

And that was an

6:30

expensive process.

6:30

Your children, it's very difficult to get your children

6:33

to hold still for anything, right? But

6:35

this photography allowed people to go, oh

6:37

my gosh, look, I can have a true

6:40

representation of what this person was

6:42

like in life. And that was very

6:45

exciting. But now imagine

6:47

that you are a young

6:49

mother and your child

6:51

of three or four has

6:54

died, which happens a lot, actually,

6:56

the infant mortality rate was very, very high in

6:59

the Victorian period. And you

7:02

want to remember this infant, but of course you

7:04

don't have any images of them before

7:06

they died because that would be expensive and

7:08

difficult to do. You still

7:11

want to remember them. The next

7:13

best thing is to photograph them

7:15

after they are dead. And at

7:17

the very least, they will hold still for you. I

7:20

find this absolutely remarkable,

7:22

Randy, that in an age where death

7:24

is very visible across

7:27

society in the home and in

7:29

the street sometimes, this

7:32

process of making death visible

7:34

by photographing it, or is it a very

7:37

personal thing that's specific to each person

7:39

who's having the photograph

7:40

made?

7:41

Both. So actually, I would say

7:43

it's more the second because you're right,

7:46

death was very visible. And this is partly

7:48

because this idea of commodity

7:50

culture, the Victorians

7:53

also wore

7:55

emblems of death. So for instance,

7:57

black armbands, if you couldn't afford an

8:00

entire morning suit. And there

8:02

were stages. So for instance, you

8:04

didn't just wear black, you wore black for

8:06

a certain period of time that would not reflect light,

8:08

like you wore black crepe. Then you could

8:10

wear black satin, which did reflect light. Then

8:13

you could wear gray, then you could wear blue. So there

8:15

was actually, if you could afford to have

8:17

a wardrobe like that,

8:18

there was a way to tell the entire world

8:21

how long you had been mourning and

8:22

perhaps how deep the mourning was.

8:24

And this was popularized by Queen

8:27

Victoria, who actually wore mourning

8:29

weeds after her husband died until

8:31

her own death many years later. So

8:33

you could see death everywhere. Death was already

8:36

present, but you had no

8:38

means of making that person

8:41

present

8:41

for you the way

8:42

we think of today. You know, we all have images

8:44

of our grandparents or parents that we may have

8:47

lost. They didn't have that. So

8:49

with the with the advent of photography, you

8:52

who couldn't afford to hire a painter, right,

8:55

you could actually have

8:56

a representation of this person that you love

8:58

in your home, not only

9:00

as somebody you could remember, but also as a sort

9:03

of tribute to them is like

9:04

a celebration of the fact that you loved

9:07

and care for this person. You mentioned

9:09

Queen Victoria there, Brandy. And I think that

9:11

was one of the images that was coming into my mind as you were

9:13

speaking about this kind of turning

9:17

mourning into an

9:19

act of iconography almost. And

9:21

I'm just wondering how fashionable

9:25

mourning became so that it's influencing

9:27

this act of death photography. Was

9:29

it something that almost took on a new lease

9:32

of life following the performance that

9:34

Victoria was

9:34

carrying out? You know, for

9:37

a book that I researched, I found some fascinating

9:39

details. So

9:40

what begins as her own

9:42

attempt

9:43

to show how deeply she cared for

9:45

her husband and what a loss it was becomes

9:48

a great

9:48

way to sell things. So there

9:50

were magazines that,

9:52

you know, would literally have advertisements

9:54

like, you know, don't be caught in

9:56

bad mourning clothes, you know, show

9:58

that you really loved your loved ones.

11:59

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12:14

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12:16

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12:25

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12:32

I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and all

12:34

this month on Not Just the Tudors,

12:37

we're diving even deeper into

12:39

the dynasty that has fascinated us for

12:41

five centuries. How did

12:43

the unlikely Henry Tudor rise

12:46

to cement power for his family? It

12:48

is a reign of calamity and threat. It's

12:50

putting a stop to some of the practices that have gone before

12:53

and then setting the scene out for a more stable

12:55

Tudor dynasty to take power after him.

12:58

How did Elizabeth I honour her

13:00

mother's memory? Elizabeth's courtiers

13:02

were very uncertain how to talk

13:05

about Anne Boleyn, whereas Elizabeth took a different

13:07

view.

13:07

And was Mary I as bad

13:10

and bloody as we've been led to believe? Elizabeth

13:13

was such a queen of spin and

13:15

did such a good job in making

13:17

sure that Mary's reputation was

13:19

what it became. Subscribe and follow

13:22

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13:24

Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

13:38

So let's come then, Brandi, to the

13:40

photographs themselves, or some of the photographs themselves.

13:42

I'm looking at one right now, so I'm going to describe it for

13:44

you and then we'll talk a little bit more generally about

13:47

what kind of poses

13:50

might have been acceptable or expected. So

13:52

the image that I'm looking at now is in black and white, obviously

13:54

enough. And I have a woman who

13:57

has obviously enough passed away, I guess

13:59

it's more obvious. because we know it. She's

14:01

sitting in what seems to be a rocking chair and

14:04

behind her you can see some panelling and also some wallpaper

14:06

on the wall. Her eyes are open

14:09

and she is looking off to the

14:11

left as I view the photograph. She's

14:14

dressed in a high-necked, probably

14:16

black, but very dark-coloured blouse

14:19

and then a dark-coloured skirt as well. One of

14:21

her hands is in her lap and the other has been

14:23

staged on one of the armrests

14:26

of the chair. I said at the start

14:29

of that description that it looks like it's

14:31

obvious enough to me that she has passed. But

14:34

actually if I didn't know and I just came across that picture,

14:36

maybe I wouldn't have known. So is that a typical

14:39

pose? Is that a typical picture that you could

14:41

expect in this genre?

14:42

I know that sort of well actually.

14:44

It sort of appears in my book and I know

14:46

from whom it comes. So I

14:48

worked with a

14:49

collector of rare photography

14:51

and mostly he collected daguerreotypes.

14:53

That one is not a daguerreotype.

14:56

Several of the ones that I've seen are. He had

14:58

something like 300, 400 of

15:01

these

15:01

which have subsequently gone to a museum

15:04

called the Dittrick Medical History Centre and Museum.

15:07

I got to look over a table of

15:09

just so many of these images. Just

15:11

all of them spread out. It

15:14

is absolutely typical. They

15:15

frequently posed these

15:17

persons as though they were alive

15:20

and they intended them to look as though

15:22

they were alive. That one

15:24

you're right. But there is a wistful

15:26

expression. You could almost imagine that she was deep

15:29

in thought if you didn't know that

15:31

she had passed on. It's quite common

15:33

to put them in settings that they

15:35

would have been in life. So it's very possible

15:38

that this was someone sitting in their own living

15:40

room or parlour. If I'm thinking

15:42

of the same one, there looks to be some embroidery

15:45

or some sort of handicraft about.

15:47

And this could have been hers. And so it

15:49

might be also a staging of

15:51

here's this person. Here's what they

15:54

were up to. Here's what they did as hobbies

15:56

or handicrafts. These are representations

15:59

of them. That was quite common.

15:59

common as well, posing

16:02

of

16:02

deceased children with their toys, for

16:05

instance. But possibly, for

16:07

me, the most unusual are the photos

16:09

that mix the dead children with living

16:12

children or dead persons with living people.

16:15

And those are very

16:16

strange because it

16:17

becomes very difficult to tell which

16:21

of the people you know it's a morning photograph.

16:24

And so the one that most

16:27

startled me, which I believe is in the Burns

16:29

archive, is there's two

16:32

elder parents seated, and standing

16:34

behind them with a hand on each shoulder is a teenage

16:36

girl. And I, of

16:39

course, assumed that one of the parents

16:41

had died, but in fact, it's the standing

16:43

figure. Wow.

16:45

How have they

16:47

propped her

16:48

off? They propped, they, yeah. So many of these,

16:50

you asked me earlier about the practicalities, these

16:52

photographers would have various props

16:55

to hold people up, to pose their

16:57

arms to, in our

16:59

age, we're so we're very death

17:02

phobic. And we think, oh, no, they start rotting right

17:04

away. Oh, dear. That's not true.

17:05

Actually, a body takes a long time to start

17:07

really decomposing. You have three days, four

17:10

days. And we think that

17:12

rigamortis happens immediately. Well, rigamortis happens,

17:14

and then it relaxes again. So actually, bodies

17:16

are posable. So they would have little

17:19

sort of coat hook looking things to

17:21

stand people up sometimes they would paint

17:24

the eyes over the width. I've heard

17:26

of this. Yes. Well, one of the things you can't,

17:28

there's a lot of things you can fake. And the

17:31

reason that when

17:31

you see a body in an open casket,

17:33

the eyes are closed is the one thing that we just

17:36

can't really fake our eyes, your

17:38

eyes shrink and shrivel, they're mostly

17:41

water. So as the body dries

17:43

out, over a course of even hours

17:45

to days, the eyes become not nice

17:47

to look at. So the eyes are either closed,

17:49

but in this case, they wanted her to seem like

17:52

she was alive. And so they will sometimes

17:54

paint

17:55

over the lids

17:56

and occasionally actually make

17:58

changes to the photographs themselves afterwards.

17:59

So there's a couple different ways that it gets

18:02

done, but that one's very disturbing I

18:04

think I've seen an example of people

18:06

who had painted the eyes onto

18:08

the photograph

18:09

That's interesting

18:11

that raises so many issues there about the

18:13

sort of removal once again from the

18:16

body and the layer of Distance

18:19

as well as commemoration

18:19

that the photograph provides I

18:22

suppose because people would be then looking at the photograph

18:24

After the body has been removed, you know

18:27

Something to kind of look back on and

18:28

there's something there about the intimacy

18:31

of posting a body And then

18:33

the non intimacy the distance that a photograph

18:36

can create really it's a

18:39

strange Strange sort of

18:41

compromise.

18:41

I don't know brandy I don't know what you think but

18:43

like there's also something about the proximity

18:45

to the dead right in terms of I know

18:48

in Ireland we still very much wake

18:51

the dead and so we I

18:53

mean, it's probably a bit of a strange

18:55

example But but my grandmother passed away my

18:58

husband came into the hospital

19:00

to you know Just see the family and but

19:03

he didn't realize that her body was still in

19:05

the bed and he he's English and

19:07

he'd never been To awaken he'd never seen a dead body And

19:10

so he was very much taken aback whereas we as children

19:12

are slightly forced I will say into wake

19:15

rooms where there is a dead body on display

19:17

and obviously this is happening in Victorian

19:21

times too where there's a proximity to death

19:23

that is not so much to do

19:25

right and I think what I

19:27

would say about that which also gets to your point

19:30

about the Combination of intimacy

19:32

and distance is that frequently

19:34

people died at home. We have sort

19:37

of sanitized Scrubbed

19:39

death so to speak especially here in the United States,

19:41

which is where I'm located So on one hand we do

19:43

have open caskets here, which is almost

19:46

de rigueur right? Everybody sort of has the open

19:48

casket model typically in the United

19:50

States, but it's so

19:52

Removed so the person

19:54

is ill

19:55

they leave the house and go to the hospital and often

19:58

you don't see them again or if you

19:59

even in the hospital it's scary thera

20:02

winners white walls and people in it clean and it's

20:04

friday and it's there's still this barrier

20:06

of medicine and between you and then you

20:08

don't see them again until they are

20:11

treated and preserved and

20:13

dressed and in an open casket

20:15

so there is a lack

20:17

of reality that happens

20:19

when when we do that process and

20:21

i remember as a child at home

20:24

part of my family's from west virginia

20:25

and my west virginian side of the family or

20:27

scots

20:28

irish and so we did he wakes

20:30

my very first funeral had wake within the next

20:32

one didn't and it was so i didn't

20:34

understand why of why didn't we do the same

20:37

and should stop very it's because itself

20:40

so much more alien in a way to

20:42

see someone when they were sick and then suddenly see

20:44

this very propped up kind

20:46

of posed body in a casket

20:49

you know sometimes weeks later whereas

20:51

when i'm when my grandfather had passed

20:54

similar to you we had a week for the body

20:56

and so and it was in an actual parlor

20:58

of someone's home via the we weren't even

21:00

in a hospital you know you're just there and

21:02

there's there's granddad

21:04

and i think that that intimacy

21:07

is something i sort of took for granted but

21:09

in a victorian period you also

21:11

died at home and you are relatives

21:14

washed

21:14

your body and trust your

21:16

body and prepared your body and that still happens

21:19

cross culturally but not typically

21:21

in the united states or england or

21:24

evil or europe etc so

21:25

i think that's a one level

21:27

of further you've you've touched

21:28

handled bathed

21:31

you're aware of sort of the messier

21:33

less nice things about bodies

21:36

that typically we reserved for

21:38

undertakers and you know funeral

21:40

directors and people who work in morgue

21:42

that center

21:42

i think domestic letting off the site

21:45

gotham particular is so interesting because

21:48

same one that we've just been discussing of the women

21:50

funded see it's a rocking can see

21:52

how some of her and droid real from from across lag

21:54

behind her that there is so much

21:56

of the home on display in the objects that

21:59

season lucy it

21:59

with, that we've got to remember

22:02

as well that

22:02

that setting would remain the same,

22:04

the seat would probably still be there, her work

22:07

might still be there. And so

22:09

the photograph kind of provides a link

22:11

to that environment. And it's a way maybe quite

22:14

a ghostly way of placing that person back

22:16

in the environment after they have left it, whether they died

22:19

there or not, that you can kind of reinsert them

22:21

into an object escape that still

22:23

exists. Absolutely. And I will

22:25

say, I just want to say not all photographs

22:28

do that. And one of the things that I noticed, there

22:30

was one particular image

22:31

that stood out to me a lot in my research, which

22:34

was a child had died.

22:35

And the family, they took

22:37

a photograph with the infant while the

22:39

infant was in its coffin. And that's a very

22:42

different kind of image. This is an image that is not

22:44

pretending that the child lived.

22:45

This is an image that is actually

22:48

preserving the fact that the child

22:50

died. And there are a couple of those,

22:52

which I think is very interesting and goes

22:55

to, I mean,

22:56

of course, it's the family's wishes,

22:58

basically, that you're seeing. One

23:00

particularly upsetting photo that

23:02

I saw was a photographer took

23:05

a photo of an infant through a window

23:07

in a quarantine house because it had

23:10

been quarantined against contagious disease.

23:12

So, you know, there's a vast array of the way

23:14

these things were done. And only

23:16

very occasionally do we know what

23:19

the thoughts of the people are. But

23:21

once in a while, one of those photos will

23:23

have information on the back. So there

23:26

was a set of two photos, one of

23:28

a gentleman in a coffin, and then another

23:30

picture of the same gentleman posed as

23:32

the living. And the back of the photographs

23:35

of him in the coffin actually had notes,

23:36

probably that the photographer

23:38

wrote down, probably from the family, saying

23:41

things like, you know, this is how he wears his mustache.

23:43

And, you know, and it does

23:45

remind me a little

23:46

bit of when you if you're going to do an open casket

23:48

in the US, you typically you pick out

23:50

the clothing or you say this is how they would have worn

23:52

their hair or etc. So that was also

23:54

part of it. And every once in a while you get a glimpse

23:57

of what the family sort

23:58

of wanted from

23:59

those photos, but usually we just have to guess.

24:02

Can I ask as well, it just occurred to me, I don't

24:04

know the answer to this, where were these

24:07

photographs meant to be displayed? Was

24:09

it something for private consumption that would have been maybe

24:11

inserted into a Bible or was this framed and

24:13

put on a mantelpiece hung on the wall? For

24:15

the momenta mori photos, the photos

24:17

of the death that you were grieving,

24:19

they were frequently put right up in the house.

24:21

They would have them prominently displayed.

24:23

Sometimes they would also

24:25

be draped with a kind of

24:27

black fabric to kind of represent.

24:29

When it comes to more personal,

24:32

smaller momenta mori, that

24:34

was more private. Even if you wore it as a jewel,

24:36

for instance, like a brooch or a ring,

24:39

only you knew who that hair belonged

24:41

to or that item belonged to.

24:44

So braided hair in a locket is where

24:46

that more personal

24:46

side might be located, whereas

24:49

the photographs

24:50

were intended for public display usually.

24:52

I have seen a few very, very small ones

24:54

that were clearly meant to either be sort

24:57

of pocket versions or it almost reminds

24:59

me of the small icons people

25:02

would carry if they were in Orthodox faith, they were about

25:04

that size. But normally,

25:06

people were intending to share these with

25:09

other

25:09

people. I guess an interest in showing bodies

25:11

as being lively in some way, as

25:13

being sort of reanimated or even

25:16

the muhan tamore pictures with the

25:19

eyes open, there's an element of

25:21

sort of trying to imitate life

25:23

whilst making it very clear that these people

25:26

are dead in most instances. So why?

25:30

What's this fascination with

25:32

post-mortem liveliness?

25:35

What is that about? I

25:37

think for most of the grief portraits

25:39

that were taken, it was probably

25:41

hoping that you could

25:43

create an image you could display that people

25:45

wouldn't necessarily know that the child

25:47

had already died. I'm saying child because

25:49

I'm thinking of is an image of three

25:52

children, two of them are alive and one of them is

25:54

dead, posed together as though they are playing

25:56

together. And I'm trying to imagine what that does

25:59

to you as the other two children. children, you know,

26:01

but they were more familiar and more intimate

26:03

with death than we are. So perhaps it wasn't

26:06

a big deal, but that is

26:08

something that if you put that on a wall to

26:10

share, there's a point at which it

26:13

ceases to be a grief object and begins

26:15

to be, you know, a family portrait. So

26:18

for instance, I have photographs of

26:20

my grandparents and I put them on display, but

26:22

they were taken when they were alive and

26:24

doing things that life people do. It would

26:26

never occur to me to, even if I had one,

26:29

to display a picture of them after they had

26:31

gone, looking like they had gone,

26:33

because then you're stuck in that. A brief

26:36

is a process and we never get

26:38

through that process. It's a long

26:39

process. I've often compared

26:41

grieving for a loved one like an amputation

26:44

of some part of your body. You don't go back

26:46

to the way you were before, but you learn to live

26:48

with it. So I suspect

26:51

that the living photographs that are meant to look

26:53

living for people in that time period are

26:55

photographs you can continue to look at after

26:58

you've processed through that grief and come

27:00

out, you know, in a different space. And now

27:02

you can look at it with some joy and

27:05

remembrance in the

27:05

way I look at the pictures taken of my grandparents

27:08

when they were alive. I was trying to

27:10

think if it's gone somewhere today and I was

27:12

just thinking this isn't directly comparable,

27:14

but initially I was thinking, you know, there were some

27:17

people put pictures of the person when they were alive on

27:19

the tombstone. But equally,

27:21

I just recalled that in the

27:23

last few years, I will not be naming names, in

27:25

the last few years I was definitely at a wake where

27:27

I saw somebody use their smartphone to take a picture

27:30

of the body in the coffin

27:32

as it was being waked. And I remember being quite shocked

27:34

at that as well and thinking, what

27:37

are they doing? But it's nothing got to do with me.

27:39

But it's, you know, that's in a way, death

27:42

photography, right? It certainly is. You know,

27:45

you might have seen that there's a bit of a controversy

27:47

happening right now over the display of human

27:49

remains in the Mudra Museum and not

27:52

just in the Mudra, it's at a Hunterian, there's lots of other

27:54

places that are facing this right now.

27:57

It's whether or not you have consent to do such

27:59

things. And so, momenta mori photography

28:01

was common

28:02

in the Victorian period. If you were

28:05

ill or dying, you would probably

28:08

have a sense that yes, this is something that they were going to

28:10

do. Maybe you even spoke to your loved

28:12

ones about it. If it wasn't a sudden death,

28:14

because you might have had input. We

28:16

live in a culture where no one photographs

28:19

the, like that's not, you know, we know that's not appropriate.

28:21

You don't do that. So, it's very unlikely that anyone

28:24

would die

28:24

thinking that their body was going to be photographed

28:26

later on, apart from say

28:29

pathological or forensic

28:31

reasons.

28:32

So, if some of that comes down

28:34

to consent, like who gives consent

28:35

for you to take a photograph of

28:37

a body in a coffin, that it's touchy,

28:39

isn't it? Yeah, totally. I

28:42

mean, we're going to have a wrap up soon, which I could keep

28:44

talking about this forever. But before we do,

28:46

I do want to ask you one thing. What

28:49

do you think, as a parting question, what do

28:51

you think we can learn today

28:53

about death from looking into

28:56

death in the past?

28:57

Well, one thing, and I had said

28:59

this on many occasions, that I think we

29:01

should learn, is that rituals

29:03

are not something that is silly.

29:06

They are very important to how we process our

29:09

grief. And we have

29:11

lost a lot of rituals, partly

29:12

because we're a much less religious society

29:15

than we once were. But you

29:17

can't really grieve wrong. And so

29:20

I always tell people, take a look at what

29:22

works, what worked in your past, what worked

29:24

in the past, look at other cultures,

29:27

choose the things that allow you to process

29:29

through grief in the best way

29:31

for yourself, because you cannot

29:33

grieve wrong unless you don't do it at all.

29:39

Thanks for listening to After Dark,

29:42

Myths, Mysteeds and The Paranormal.

29:44

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29:47

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29:52

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29:59

If that's the case, get in touch

30:02

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You see, people knew each other and they're all either

30:30

dead or missing. There's something big

30:33

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30:35

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30:38

tell me where they are. We will go get them.

30:40

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30:42

dig and I will find them. I got to find

30:44

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30:47

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